Intellectually, the activists of the New Left are the most docile conformists.
They have accepted as dogma all the philosophical beliefs of their elders for
generations: the notions that faith and feeling are superior to reason, that
material concerns are evil, that love is the solution to all problems, that the
merging of one’s self with a tribe or a community is the noblest way to live.
There is not a single basic principle of today’s Establishment which they do
not share. Far from being rebels, they embody the philosophic trend of the past
200 years (or longer): the mysticism-altruism-collectivism axis, which has
dominated Western philosophy from Kant to Hegel to James and on down.